


Writober 2: Electric Spookyaloo: Fics Day 16: Dark Room/Basement

by indevan



Series: Writober 2: Electric Spookyaloo [16]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Monsters, M/M, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 08:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16322600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Everything in the basement has a feel to it that makes his sensitive ears prick and he wonders what Trunks’s mom will do if she finds them here.  He doesn’t know if they’re not allowed but Trunks is walking on soft feet so he tries to do the same





	Writober 2: Electric Spookyaloo: Fics Day 16: Dark Room/Basement

Sometimes they go down to Trunks’s basement.  There’s all sorts of things down here. Strange stone statues and stones.  Jars filled with herbs and powders that he can’t name. Trunks tells him not to smell them or breathe in too deeply.  Everything smells like earth and there’s a crackle in the air.

Everything in the basement has a feel to it that makes his sensitive ears prick and he wonders what Trunks’s mom will do if she finds them here.  He doesn’t know if they’re not allowed but Trunks is walking on soft feet so he tries to do the same.

He’s never met another kid like him.  Gohan always tells him to hide it in public, but he doesn’t have to with Trunks!

There’s green stuff in a jar that Trunks says not to touch and a skull candle so perfect it’s like someone melted black wax over an actual skull and stuck a wick in the top.  There’s shelves and shelves of books and dusty glass bottles filled with mysterious liquids. Trunks says they aren’t here for that.

They’re here for his mother’s cards.

Her tarot cards, creased and faded, that rest in a box on a table by a faded pentagram on the floor.  Trunks kneels down and presses his hand on it, smiling as he does. Goten doesn’t know what it means but he wonders if he should do the same.

But then he has the cards so he sits with him, cross-legged and facing one another.  Trunks spreads the cards out on the floor and Goten looks at the art. He doesn’t get the meaning, what each one means.  Just the pictures. Trunks doesn’t either. He picks a random one up and puts it to his forehead, facing its back to him.

“Guess what one I have.”

He has his eyes squeezed shut so Goten does, too.  He sees nothing in his mind but swirling darkness. Then, looming through it, a card.  A man suspended upside down, one leg bent. He sees the words in script beneath it.

“The Hanged Man,” he says, opening his eyes.

Trunks grins and turns it around.  The man in the picture looks a little like him, Goten thinks.  Not quite, though. The hair is different and he’s a grown-up. His fangs don’t look like Goten’s either.  He shudders at the image, startled by the familiarity he has with it.

“Your turn,” Trunks announces.

Goten picks up one and slides it up to look at it without letting Trunks see.  He looks at the Star and thinks this one  _ really _ looks like him.  It even has little ears and fangs.  He wonders where Trunks’s mother got these cards, but he doesn’t want to think too hard.  He closes his eyes and pictures the image again. It’s not just the star, it’s him--really him.  Crouched at the river and backed by the full moon.

“The Star.”

Goten’s eyes flutter open and he nods.

“They’re cool aren’t they?” Trunks’s eyes and teeth glint in the darkness and Goten doesn’t know what to say so he nods.

Something about the cards scares him, though.  Maybe it’s deeper, what they represent, that he doesn’t know but feel is just on the edge of his mind.  About the art on the first card and the one that looks like him. He wants to get out of here with its weird statues.

“Can we play outside?” he asks. “I don’t like bein’ cooped up.”

Trunks seems startled but then he nods. “Sure thing.”


End file.
